Standard mattress designs have evolved very little in the past fifty years. A standard mattress generally includes a set of metal springs or coils mounted either on a base under a pad, or sandwiched in the center of a pair of pads. The metal springs and pad or pads are then covered with a strapping material. The entire structure is then sewn into a cloth cover and the edges are wrapped and sewn. Thus, once the mattress is fabricated, the components are not replaceable. The limitations of metal spring mattresses combined with improved quality and durability of foam products has lead to the relatively recent development of a foam core mattress as a viable alternative to metal spring mattress. A foam core mattress can provide significant improvements in comfort and support compared to conventional spring-based mattresses. For example, spring-based mattresses inherently have varying properties over their surface, and the variations of properties relating to zone and surface areas are improved only with great difficulty.
A basic foam mattress may include one or more layers of foam having desirable properties assembled into a fabric cover so as to appear identical in appearance to a standard metal spring mattress. A foam mattress may include a center core of relatively high resilience foam sandwiched between two layers of lower resilience foam encased in a fabric shell. This construction allows for a reversible mattress.
The reaction of a user to a mattress is highly personal, and the prospective purchaser in the showroom is likely to decide to purchase or not to purchase a product within a few minutes. The most prevalent explanation for the return of the mattress relates to an aspect of the comfort of the user or users specifically the perceived temperature and firmness of the mattress. It is commonly observed that most people spend 6 to 8 hours each day in bed. Accordingly, in marketing mattresses to consumers, the retail stores typically stress the quality and the comfort of the mattress, to justify sales price of a high quality mattress. Many retailers who offer high end mattress products also offer a guarantee allowing the purchaser to return the mattress if they are not completely satisfied within a certain time period. As a result, it is not uncommon for retail stores to have return rates of eight to ten percent. These levels of return are significant and indeed compounded by the stigma attached to a “used” mattress that may only be resold at best at about ten percent of its original sales price.